Question

I am parsing an xml using DOM Parser. I get a doc and then from that doc i get a url. when i search through that url for a particular char sequence i receive a null pointer exception.
This is what i am doing:

  Boolean var = false;
  String url = theElement.getChildNodes().item(5).getNodeValue();
    if (url.contains("-b-"))  // this throws exception
    {
      var = true;
    }

Please any suggestions…

Answer 1

These long chains of “dereference” operations often cause problems if one or more of them results in a null pointer.

Before setting url, print out the values for:

theElement
theElement.getChildNodes()
theElement.getChildNodes().item(5)
theElement.getChildNodes().item(5).getNodeValue();

Almost certainly the last one will be a null reference.

The documentation for String.contains shows no specific exception is thrown, hence the likelihood is high that it’s a null reference (especially, as I’ve just noticed, you explicitly state that it’s a null pointer exception).